Kong: Skull Island
Kong: Skull Island is a 2017 film co-produced by Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. that serves as an origin story for King Kong. It is the second entry in the MonsterVerse, following 2014's Godzilla, and will be followed by 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters, before culminating with 2020's Godzilla vs. Kong. Plot The film opens with a prologue during World War II, showing an American bailing out of his damaged P-51 Mustang. He encounters a Japanese pilot on the beach and briefly fights him, but as they struggle with a sword, a massive creature suddenly appears, looming over the two as the title credits roll when the camera zoom into the American soldier’s eye. In 1973, as the Vietnam War dies down, former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad is hired by government agent Bill Randa to guide an expedition to map out a mysterious uncharted region in the Pacific dubbed "Skull Island", which has never been mapped due to perpetual storms surrounding it. Randa also recruits the Sky Devils, a helicopter squadron led by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard and prominently made up of his right-hand, Major Jack Chapman and Captain Earl Cole to escort them to the island. The group is soon joined by "anti-war" photographer Mason Weaver, who is assigned to take pictures of the expedition, when in reality, she plans to expose it as the covert military operation she believes it to be. Arriving on Skull Island, Packard's men begin dropping explosives developed by seismologist Houston Brooks to determine if the ground is hollow, despite Conrad's objections. The helicopters are suddenly attacked by a 100 foot-tall ape which goes by the name of Kong. All of the helicopters are destroyed as the beast throws a palm tree into one, and swats them out of the air like flies, and the survivors end up being split into small groups. In the midst of Kong's rampage, Packard stares up at Kong, interlocking eyes with him, filled with rage. The survivors' only hope for rescue is a resupply team that will meet them at the island's northern end in three days time. When confronted by Packard, Randa reveals his affiliation to the secret government organization Monarch and the expedition's true purpose to acquire proof of the existence of forgotten monsters. Packard and his remaining men bury their dead comrades and begin searching for the missing members of the expedition, including Chapman. Along the way, they overcome a Mother Longlegs, slicing off its bamboo-like legs which topples it over, allowing Packard to finish it off with gunfire. In a river nearby, Chapman is washing and filling his water canteen, until Kong appears. Chapman flees, leaving Kong tending his wounds and drinking after his battle with the Sky Devils. He is then suddenly attacked by a Mire Squid, which he manages to kill and proceeds to eat before leaving the river with its carcass. Meanwhile, Conrad, Weaver, Brooks, biologist San Lin, soldier Reg Slivko, and Landsat employee Victor Nieves run into the local Iwi natives and meet Hank Marlow, revealed to be the missing pilot who crash-landed on the island in 1944 with a Japanese pilot named Gunpei Ikari. Marlow explains that Kong is the island's guardian and worshiped by the natives for protecting them from the Skullcrawlers, reptilian underground monsters who have slaughtered Kong's ancestors, leaving him as the soul survivor. Marlow reveals Kong only attacked the helicopters to prevent the bombs from awakening the largest and deadliest of the Giant Skullcrawlers, dubbed by Marlow as "The Big One". He also reveals that "The Big One" will doom everyone and everything on the island should anything happen to Kong. After bonding with the natives, Weaver encounters a Sker Buffalo trapped under a fallen helicopter just outside the village. She struggles vainly to free the large beast but Kong comes and saves the buffalo, exchanging glances with Weaver before departing. Marlow shows Conrad and the others a boat made from parts of Marlow's and Ikari's planes when they befriended before Ikari was killed by a Skullcrawler, and they spend the rest of the day fixing it. The following day, Conrad's group sets off down the river in the now-functioning boat, where they are beset by Psychovultures, which carry off and devour Nieves. The survivors manage to regroup with Packard, who insists on searching for Chapman, who - unbeknownst to them - has already been killed by a Skullcrawler after encountering a Spore Mantis. Marlow reluctantly leads both Conrad and Packard's team to the Boneyard, a forgotten battleground between Kong's ancestors and Skullcrawlers. The same Skullcrawler that killed Chapman attacks the group, killing Randa and many of Packard's men before Weaver kills it by triggering an explosion using Conrad's lighter. Despite learning of Chapman's death, a vengeful Packard blames Kong for the deaths of his men. Despite everyone else's warnings, Packard insisted on going to the crash site nonetheless. Marlow tried to persuade him, with Gunpei Ikari's Katana, only for Packard to knock him aside, under the implication that he would kill him if he interfered, along with anyone else thinking along the same lines. Eventually, Packard retrieves seismic explosives to lure Kong into a trap and kill him, while Conrad resolves to lead the non-military personnel back to the boat so they can rendezvous with the resupply team. Later that night, while scouting the path ahead atop a high ledge, Conrad and Weaver encounter Kong up-close, seeing that he is in fact a gentle and intelligent creature who does have a soft spot for those that do him no harm. Suddenly, explosions sound off in the distance and Kong goes toward them. Knowing of Packard's vendetta, Conrad tells Brooks and San to return to the boat while he and Weaver resolve to save Kong, a sentiment that Marlow shares. Kong finds Packard and his men at a lake and charges toward the colonel on the other side. Having previously dumped napalm into the lake, Packard sets it ablaze, setting Kong on fire and incapacitating him as his men watch in horror. He orders his men to set explosives around the fallen creature, but before he can finish Kong off, Conrad, Weaver, and Marlow arrive and a standoff ensues. Conrad and Weaver convince the other soldiers to spare Kong, but Packard furiously refuses, still seeking vengeance for his fallen men. Suddenly a massive Skullcrawler emerges from beneath the lake in the swamp near the fallen Kong. Marlow identifies this as “The Big One”. Terrified, everyone flees except Packard, who tries to detonate the explosives in a last act of revenge, but it is too late, as Kong wakes up and crushes him with his fist. Injured, Kong is overpowered by the massive opponent, which then chases the survivors as they race towards the shore and dawn comes. Cole tries to sacrifice himself to ensure the survival of his young comrades, arming grenades to supposedly kill the Skullcrawler after it eats him. However, the creature does not fall for this, and it swats him away with its tail, killing him as the grenades explode on the side of a mountain but Cole's sacrifice buys enough time for Kong to return and save the others, smashing a giant boulder against the Skullcrawler's head. Weaver climbs a tall cliff and fires a flare to guide Brooks and San to their location. Kong battles the Skullcrawler, at one point swinging a massive tree against its face. However, the Skullcrawler uses its tail to throw Kong into a sunken boat and he gets entangled in its chains. As the Skullcrawler closes in for the kill, Brooks and San arrive on the boat and open fire on the beast. Enraged, he turns his attention to the humans, buying Kong enough time to break free. Weaver fires a flare at the Skullcrawler, destroying its right eye, and Conrad lures it away from the people on the boat. Using a boat propeller attached to a chain, Kong impales the massive Skullcrawler with it, uses the chain to reel him in, and throws the Skullcrawler into the side of the cliff Weaver is standing on, accidentally causing her to fall into the river. Then Kong uses the propeller to slice open his adversary's throat, seemingly killing him. Weaver almost drowns but she is rescued by Kong. Unfortunately, the giant Skullcrawler is still alive and it attacks Kong with Weaver clutched in his hand. In an attempt to devour Weaver, the Skullcrawler wraps his tongue around Kong's arm and pulls it down his throat. Kong uses this to his advantage, and with a violent yank of the Skullcrawler's tongue, tears out the creature's innards, finally killing him for good, avenging the deaths of his parents, and the extinction of the rest of his kind. With the creature finally dead, Kong gently sets Weaver down, looks back at her and Conrad and wanders off, peacefully allowing the surviving humans to leave. As helicopters arrive to take the survivors home, Kong reappears. Watching them leave in his eye, Kong beats his chest and roars fiercely, asserting his reign as the King of Skull Island. Sometime afterward, Marlow returns home and is reunited with his wife and meets his now-adult son for the first time. He is later shown enjoying a beer and a hot dog as he watches his long-missed favorite sports on TV. In a post-credits scene, Conrad and Weaver are held in a room by Monarch, where Brooks reveals they have been recruited by the organization. Brooks and San debrief them that Kong is not the only monster to roam the world, and not the only king. They are then shown archive footage showing cave paintings, depicting silhouetted images, which appear to be a bipedal spiked dinosaur-like creature, a winged pterosaur-like creature, a gigantic butterfly, and a three-headed dragon, before showing one final painting of the dinosaur and the three-headed dragon engaged in combat. The screen fades to black and a loud, familiar roar is heard: none other than that of the King of the Monsters himself...Godzilla. Appearances Monsters * Kong * Skullcrawler * Leafwing * Sker Buffalo * Mother Longlegs * Spore Mantis * Mire Squid * Godzilla (cameo; as a cave painting and roar) * Mothra (cameo; as a cave painting) * Rodan (cameo; as a cave painting) * King Ghidorah (cameo; as a cave painting) * MUTO * Eotriceratops (skull only) Organizations * Monarch * Landsat * United States Army Vehicles * Bell UH-1 Iroquois * Athena * Boeing CH-47 Chinook * Mitsubishi A6M Zero * Lockheed P-3 Orion * Sikorsky HH-53 * Bell AH-1 Cobra * P-51 Mustang * Grey Fox Weapons * Colt M1902 Pistol * Colt M1911A1 Pistol * Browning Hi-Power Type 73 * Mauser C96 * M16A1 * M16 SP1 * M14 Rifle * M60 Machine Gun * M60D * AK-47 * M40 Recoilless Rifle * Browning M2HB * Browning .50 Caliber AN/M2 Aircraft Machine Gun * General Electric M134 Minigun * Ithaca 37 * Remington Model 870 * M9-7 Flamethrower * M26 Hand Grenade * M18 Colored Smoke Grenade * M83 Smoke Grenade * M203 Grenade Launcher * M79 Grenade Launcher * M8 Flare Pistol * Orion Flare Gun Category:Comics, Stories, and Movies